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30/12/2017

Sir Ringo Star? I mean - really?

Maybe he's spent the last (what, decades?) doing astonishingly good stuff for charities, I don't know.

Ringo Star might have just been sitting about.
 
(Mind you, if I did nothing else, and lived on Royalties all my life for being a third-rate drummer - I think I'D DO ASTONISHING THINGS FOR CHARITY).

It just seems impossibly WRONG somehow.  Sir Ringo Star.
Eulogize the mediocre so idiots like me can type about, THINK about this stuff . . .

12/12/2017

Facebook

“Your behaviors, you don’t realize it, but you are being programmed,” he said. “It was unintentional, but now you gotta decide how much you’re going to give up, how much of your intellectual independence.

I guess that headline looks a bit dramatic doesn't it? 

It came from today's Guardian - citing Chamath Palihapitiya (former vice-present for user growth - facebook) - the whole piece is HERE.

The topic obviously chimes (hits dead-on) with my own decision to ditch that platform a few months back.
I then started to realise that I have been sub-consciously charting this behaviour, for years and years - as I teach 16 to 18 year olds, and 20-somethings, for hours every week, every day of the week.

I've witnessed (the majority of) these young people change in their reactions to events (and their knowledge of, or accuracy of), speech patterns, attention span, shallowness of concerns, narrowness of their vision, inability to empathise  - at such an accelerated rate, it can only be down to some outside influence.
It's not 'them' and 'me'.  It's not age.  It's all happened too quickly, and mirrors too accurately what they're seeing, how they're seeing it, on their screens.

Not just FB, mind you.  Even the online version of our local rag (Dorset Echo - surely the worst website for user experience, load speed etc - ever developed in the entire history of the world wide web) is peppered liberally with some truly awful click-bait type stuff - on a news website?  We really have hit the crap here, I can tell you.

So where's it going?

Like so much of what we call 'freedom' or 'choice' - to me it's going toward that thing we all state we don't want.
Regulation.  The trouble is, in the 21st century, just who do we trust to regulate?


03/11/2017

Euro shopping

I was in Grefrath, Germany last week - shopping in their new Rewe - this one here (actually this one, you've no idea how much effort I put in to produce these things for you!)

Quite interesting Rewe - they've jumped opinion and gone straight for no plastic bags - none of yer "oh we'll charge 5p" rubbish, I mean - what good is that - with stuff dying in the Oceans?
(That story is here)

We got some super French Red - about 2 euros a bottle (wish I'd got more now) - and Space Chicken stumbled across Coffee filters - god knows how you do that, I mean they're quite flat, generally, aren't they?

What?  you scream - no positive life enhancement from the branded gadget on its Alter in the Küche?  Nope - just a plastic cone thingy, and a bit of paper.

Thing is - shop for this paper in the UK:


Cost of our box of filters?  (This is killing you isn't it?)

45cents.   (About 40p at the date of this blog).

10/10/2017

That damned Penguin

By god they must spend millions?
Every damned evening - through multiple channels, across multiple time-slots this friendly guy and his sweet, sweet, sweet little Penguin tell us how British Gas are committed to a warm home for everyone, to reducing fuel bills; the music calming, the little sweet, sweet, sweet Penguin waddling about in a really sweet way, little expressions of sweet modesty, little messages of care, and hope, and love from this company.

Can't wait to get home to see another one, can you?

Doctor Foster

Well I dunno, I watched it on catch-up, not out of choice - but it was a favourite of the Space Chicken.
Having just got to the end of this second season - all I can say is:
Depictions - people with too much money worrying about crap.
If Simon ever comes back to give a reason for a THIRD season I think I'll throw the TV out.

09/10/2017

Own Brands - the new Brands

Funny isn't it?

Not so long ago you or I wouldn't have touched an own brand for love nor money.  No matter how much of good deal it seemed, i just wouldn't be worth it.

Soup?  Has to be Heinz.
Beans?  Has to be Heinz.
Biscuits?  Has to McVities
Breakfast?  Has to be Kelloggs.
Ketch-up?  Has to be Heinz.
Brown Pickle?  Branston.

The list goes on doesn't it?
Fast-forward into Aldi or Lidl - obscure brands replacing the big labels, a quarter the price - and (here's the thing) just as good if not better!

Why couldn't the 'big' supermarkets do that twenty years ago?

08/09/2017

0 1
Horrible isn't it? Yet somehow so stupidly horrible it's not worth fussing about.
As has been mentioned the 'lifestyle' / 'aspire to THIS' cleverer stuff, complete with music supposedly associated with the sought demographic is seriously creepy, coupled with Perfume and Coffee Ads that scream SICK - but you can't see the reason there, on the screen, as clearly as your subconscious recognises it. And all to sell more crap, branding blanding, more indebtedness, more imports, more landfill. I actually look away from the screen sometimes as I can feel this insidious creep, this nauseating intrusion. Hate it!

21/08/2017

Exhausting

Bloody mad isn't it?  At times of increased awareness (read: acceptance) that there IS such a thing as Global warming, and that car exhausts aren't exactly helping matters - new motors sold recently all seem to sport exaggerated / stylised, extra-large exhausts pipe endy-thingies - in sort of space vehicle type shapes, so you can stylishly proclaim to all just how much crap you're spewing out as you drive to Tescos.  Bloody weird.

No matter if you have an older, smaller engined car - just chuck an after-market wide-bore exhaust on, AND IT'LL SOUND LIKE A FERRARI! - fabulous.
Young (and not so young) twerps can blip their throttle pedals up and down the HMO's thin streets at one-in-the-morning for chrissakes - believing for all their worth that it doesn't make their little car sound THOROUGHLY INADEQUATE.

I don't understand, I really don't.

04/05/2017

Game of Clones

Helluva lot of copycat Game of Thrones mini TV series and Movie themes around aren't there?
"Owww . . . " said the money men - "they seem to like Empires falling and large armies n' stuff - QUICK! - get a load more shit out there"

25/04/2017

Cold snap


Blimmey the weather babes have been excited - every damned weather report for the past week has been peppered with dark mutterings, heavy expressions and superlatives - all   about the upcoming cold spell (April 25/26 - 2017).

It's almost as if they feel finally justified in their roles - in their lives - they are, at last, the NEWS they always wanted to be.

24/01/2017